


A Stranger You Know

by astral_dreams



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Ceaseless Watcher - Freeform, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Mention of the safehouse, Oneshot, Other, Season 4 Divulgence, Spoilers for up to 165, Stranger Avatar Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Stranger fuckery, Stranger! Tim, WE ALL SUFFER, apocolypse, depending on how you see it, if that's icky for you, no happy ending, there's mentioning of wrongness and descriptions of wrong looking body parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astral_dreams/pseuds/astral_dreams
Summary: After the unknowing, Tim Stoker is resurrected as an avatar of the Stranger. When Jon and Martin are once again faced with him during the Apocalypse, how will they react?--Basically an angsty oneshot I wrote thanks to Discord.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood, Not Sasha James/Tim Stoker, Sasha James/Tim Stoker, unfortunately - Relationship
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	A Stranger You Know

Tim hurt. That was strange in and of itself. Tim was supposed to be dead, but that was no matter. He needed to find out why he was hurt. His too smooth skin felt wrong against the ground as he pushed himself up into a sitting position in the pile of rubble. He could faintly hear the sound of too loud sirens that made him want to run. He wasn’t supposed to be here, not with the building like this. 

If he tried, he could faintly remember  _ why _ he was here. Something about revenge, Danny,  _ an archivist?  _ The revenge had most likely been about Danny, as Tim could very well remember his little brother’s death and how much pain it had caused him. But what of the Archivist. Why would that even cross his mind? An Archivist? At a… doll store… no, a Wax Museum. What would an Archivist be doing at a Wax Museum? The Archivist… no, Jon. Jon must’ve been who his revenge was against, that’s the only thing that made sense.

At this point the sirens had stopped, and the commotion he had previously woken up to was gone. He wasn’t in pain anymore… it must’ve been a headache. No matter that his skin felt strange, like it had been put back together. Bringing his hand up to rub at his head, he stopped when he couldn’t feel anything. It was plastic, not the skin he had expected to feel. Just smooth, hard plastic. Worse, he couldn’t  _ feel _ anything, only the pressure two pieces of plastic made against each other.

Tim frowned, but didn’t think about it any longer as it gave him a headache. Finally looking around, he realized that the building was in shambles. Why was it in shambles?  _ Duh. this is what your revenge had come to. So now you pay the price with plastic hands. _ A voice filled his mind. It was intruding, wrong, but right. This was the voice he was supposed to listen to, Tim was sure of it. So at the instruction of the voice, he made his way out and away from the damaged Wax Museum and into the streets of the nearby town. He got hushed whispers as he walked down the street, but he took them in stride. Not with a joking attitude as he might’ve in a past life, but with pride. Whispers were made about strangeness, and Tim was nothing but Strange.

* * *

His feet stopped in front of an rundown antique shop, a place the voice told him was Headquarters, and he went inside. The front room was big and filled with previous possessions of everyday people that now sat high on dusty shelves, every item adding a sense of wrongness to the room, being too big or too small, too large or too flat. It felt right in all the wrong ways. Making his way toward the backroom Tim caught sight of a mirror. It was old and stained, but he wouldn’t miss the chance to see his  new form.

He was tall. That was obvious, he had been before, but now he seemed to tower. All his limbs were slightly too long and stiff and he could see faint lines around his joints, almost like a doll that had been mended back together. His hair remained the same, but it was crisper, less bouncier. It brought to mind a stock of hay. Tim smiled at the thought and observed how the corners of his mouth stretched just a  _ bit  _ too wide and his eyes shone just a little  _ too _ much. Finally, his clothes. They were not his clothes. He could distinctly remember hideous hawaiin shirts and jeans making up most of his wardrobe, not  _ this _ .  _ This _ was a full ringmasters uniform, complete with cane, which he only just noticed in his hands. It felt wrong.

But more, it felt powerful. It felt  _ right _ . Like he had completed some sort of fate given prophecy. Tim gave a chuckle at that, but soon whipped around as a voice called out to him from the doorway.

“Do you like the outfit? You inherited it from the previous Avatar. It was a shame she died, but if she hadn’t you wouldn’t be here. I’ve been looking forward to getting to work with you Timothy Stoker,” a sickeningly sweet voice called.

The owner was a shorter woman with bright blonde hair not unlike his own. It was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she was wearing a large hoodie with a pair of leggings. She seemed eerily familiar but Tim couldn’t quite place it. His confusion must have been obvious as she continued.

“I’m Sasha, we knew each other when you still worked at the Institute, but we didn’t get really acquainted until after Jane Prentiss had attacked. I quit maybe a year later and have been working with the Circus since. It makes sense that you don’t remember much, you just got out of an accident. Why don’t you come in back and we can get started?” she said with a not right smile.

Tim simply nodded and followed her into the doorway.

* * *

The following months were amazing. Tim found he took to what they called the Strange quickly and was barely impeded by the headaches he would get around things from Before or when he would try to remember anything from then. Sasha had quickly caught up to date and the two had become fast friends. At points he had even thought he remembered having chemistry with the other, which made him feel a certain way. Sometimes flickers of a different woman (brown hair, glasses, the most beautiful smile he had ever seen) would take place in his mind, but the headaches shooed them away pretty quickly.

Since, as he was informed, their Ritual had failed a new one needed to be planned for. So starting the week after his arrival Tim threw all his energy into the task. Occasionally he would try to mess with the Archivist he had been so hell bent on revenge against before, but it always fell through and he learned quickly to not associate with anything there. The Magnus Institute was bad business, and the Circus had learned their lesson.

It got easier as it went on and it only made sense that when the Apocalypse hit that the Circus would take it full swing. They eagerly claimed their domain in the new world run by fear, a pristine looking merry-go-round. Tim it’s conductor and Sasha it’s protector. They worked together to harvest the fear that was so plentiful and laughed in the glee it brought them. All the while ignoring the ever oppressive eyeball that rested in the sky.

It was the fifth ride of what was formerly known as an hour and everything was going swimmingly. Seven people, that Tim could count, had had their faces stolen and passed on to the next seven people and the agony and fear was plentiful. He let himself get caught up in all of it, as he often did, the overwhelming power he felt drowning out all his unpleasant memories and pain until he was nothing but a name and a fear. Getting wrapped up in all of it was so easy that he almost didn’t hear Sasha talking.

That was strange. Ever since the sky had opened up, she had been silent and on edge constantly. If Tim knew any better he would’ve thought she was waiting for someone. No matter, she did her job. And even if he couldn’t help but want to miss her voice, he couldn’t bring himself to. But now she was talking, gloating even, to a pair of figures he was too far away to recognize.

He would have to check that out.

* * *

Jon was not having fun. The Not Sasha was taunting him, gloating over all the pain it could cause them, and it was truly testing his patience. His grip tightened around Martin’s hand as he steadied himself.

“Just ignore it Martin,” he said more as a reminder to himself.

Not Sasha frowned, “Oh you  _ wound _ me, Archivist. And we used to be  _ so close _ .”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Jon kept his face neutral, despite how hard of a task it was.

A faux look of shock passed onto its face with a hand dramatically pressed against its chest, “Nothing to say! Well, you crush me, bury me in the foundations of your little temple for a year, and now you have nothing to say?”

Jon grit his teeth and the conversation continued. A few more terse comments and taunts passed between them until a scared Martin asked if they should run and it had dared to agree and taunt them with a head start. Preposterous. It was time for it to realize the truth of this situation. So Jon let it know. It was his turn to monologue, to taunt and to jeer. And when the monster made its final mistake in mentioning the pain it had caused to Sasha, Jon let go.

“ _ Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing _ .”

The growing rise of static burst into a flashing explosion as the Not Sasha screamed and wailed with all the fear it had ever caused forced into its brain until it was finally smote in a flash by the eye in the sky. Clouds of dust and carnival items flew into motion.

Jon turned to Martin, trying to make sure he was ok when he froze in shock. A familiar voice was calling out to them. A voice that  _ shouldn’t be able to call out to them _ . But yet it was. He slowly turned around and couldn’t help the gut wrenching feeling he had when he saw who it was.

_ Tim _ .

* * *

Martin did not like this. It had to be a hallucination, there was no way a man who had died over a year ago was standing in front of them. Even ignoring the mess of emotions rising in his throat, it shouldn’t be physically possible, unless.. Unless he had become an avatar. Martin’s stomach lurched at this idea.  _ Tim.. an avatar? He had hated Jon so much for being an avatar, even if it had been fueled by hatred at his paranoia filled stunts. _ Not that Martin has been much better after Tim died, but he shook that thought out.

Taking stock of Tim’s outfit, a sickening realization came to him. Tim… was an Avatar of the Stranger. He hated the idea, but it made sense. He couldn’t be a victim of the Not Them, as Jon had just killed (smote?) it, and he was standing confidently in the realm of the stranger wearing what looked like a ringmasters outfit. His already present frown deepened.

Tim was smiling wildly, nothing like the friendly grin Martin had remembered, but that of a mannequin.  _ Nikola _ , his mind provided. He had never met the Avatar, but Jon had described her to him back at the cottage during many a sleepless night.

“Archivist and Archival Assistant, welcome! I hope Sasha wasn’t too rude to you. I would hate for you to be put off before I even got to meet you. It’s inconvenient that you had to kill her, but no worries. I won’t miss her too much,” Tim finally said, his voice sounding wrong in so many way.

Him speaking seemed to shake Jon out of his shock, and Martin felt bad for him even though he felt the same about the situation.

“Tim? Is that you?” Jon says cautiously, unbeleivingly.

The smile widens, “The Archivist knows my name! I thought you had forgotten all about your assistant, bossman. You never called to ask how I was. For shame!”

Jon looked pained at this, “We thought you were dead. I was in a coma for six months and they hadn’t found any part of your body after the explosion went off…”

Martin squeezed his hand in a show of support, and Jon squeezed back gratefully.

“Well I didn’t die. If anything I got a new lease on life! Isn’t it great what some new skin and fear can do? Come on boss, why’re you so grumpy? I would have expected you to be happier if I had expected you at all!” Tim teases and Jon squeezes tighter.

“I never expected to see you either. I would have thought we would have simply killed the Not Them and continued on towards London…” he muttered in response.

Tim frowns at this.

“Continue on? Why would you need to leave? We have such a nice set up here! Plenty of fear and suffering to go around and not to mention the gang’s back together. Well, you did kill Sasha, but as payment you two could stay and work as enforcers. Since that was her job, being her replacement would be the least you can do, right?”

This was getting dangerous. Tim reminded him too much of how Jon had described Nikola and they needed to leave before it got worse. It hurt Martin to admit it, but even though they had just gotten Tim back, wrong as he was, they needed to get rid of him. They couldn’t stay. They needed to continue, they needed to leave. They needed to do  _ something _ . And Martin knew that Jon would easily be convinced by this Strange version of Tim, both because of guilt and affection for what he remembered Tim once being. But they couldn’t stay.

So that left Martin to be the steady one. Jon was in no state to be responsible, and Martin wasn’t either, but someone had to. Leaning over to whisper in Jon’s ear, he told the other man what needed to happen. As he pulled away Jon gave him a pained look, but Martin just shook his head and nodded towards Tim.

The entire time he had just been standing there, smiling, relishing in the fear he had taken a part of causing and Martin hated it. He hated what Tim had become, even if not willingly, and he would give anything to get the old Tim back, but he couldn’t. So he waited until Jon was ready and then turned back towards Tim. He heard the deep breath Jon took in preparation and steadied himself to watch.

Jon did not respond to any of Tim’s previous statements, simply gave the man turned ringmaster of fear a sad look and uttered a simple phrase. ““ _ Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing _ .””

Martin could feel the power behind it, but he could also feel the sorrow in the way Jon’s voice choked up at the end. He braced himself as the screams began. He could only watch in horror as Tim wailed in agony, with his too long hands grabbing at his head trying to make the fear stop. It only lasted a minute or so, but every second dragged on as the pair could only stand and watched. 

Finally it reached its climax and the screams stopped. Tim only turned to look at Jon with the most betrayed look Martin had ever seen on a person’s face and the hatred was visible in his eyes for a split second before he was gone. Tim had gone out fully aware of what Jon had did, not as an avatar, but as a person. And he had gone out  _ hating _ the monster that had killed him - Jon. The very thought made Martin sick, but he held on as he quietly ushered the still in shock Jon away from the realm of the Stranger.

* * *

They got out, but they were not okay. After nearly three days of walking in numb silence and sleeping close to each other, not wanting to let go, Martin finally broke down crying. Jon just helped him sit down and lay against him as he violently sobbed. It only took a moment for Jon to do the same and they sat there for a long time, mourning over what could have been and what had been. For Jon the look on Tim’s face before he finally died had been permanently etched into his brain as the ultimate failure. And for Martin, his whole view on Jon’s powers had been shifted slightly to the left and he couldn’t help but wonder if he would meet the same fate as Tim. Would he to fall into an Entity only to have to be killed by the one he holds dearest to his heart?

They both desperately wanted to forget everything, but the world wouldn’t let them. So they trudged on.


End file.
